a big pink and white guy as hard as a board. He had offered me a job once, but I never got desperate enough to take it. There are one hundred and ninety ways of being a bastard and Came knew all of them. A rubbed glass partition slid open and a receptionist looked out at me. She had an iron smile and eyes that could count the money in your hip wallet. "Good morning. May I help you?" "George Peters, please, My name is Marlowe." She put a green leather book on the ledge. "Is he expecting you, Mr. Marlowe? I don't see your name on the appointment list." "It's a personal matter. I just talked to him on the phone." "I see.

How do you spell your name, Mr. Marlowe? And your first name, please?" I told her. She wrote it down on a long narrow form, then slipped the edge under a dock punch. "Who's that supposed to impress?" I asked her. "We are very particular about details here," she said coldly. "Colonel Carne says you never know when the most trivial fact may turn out to be vital." "Or the other way around," I said, but she didn't get it. When she had finished her book work she looked up and said: "I will announce you to Mr. Peters." I told her that made me very happy. A minute later a door in the paneling opened and Peters beckoned me into a battleship-gray corridor lined with little offices that looked a police shieldcould hold me upside down and drainmy gutschange your mind like cells.

His office had soundproofing on the ceiling, a gray steel desk with two matching chairs, a gray dictating machine on a gray stand, a telephone and pen set of the same color as the walls and floor. There were a couple of framed photographs on the walls, one of Carne in uniform, with his snowdrop helmet on, and one of Carne as a civilian seated behind a desk and looking inscrutable. Also framed on the wall was a small inspirational legend in steely letters on a gray background. It read: A CARNE OPERATIVE DRESSES, SPEAKS AND BEHAVES LIKE A GENTLEMAN AT ALL TIMES AND IN ALL. PLACES. THERE ARE NO EXCEPTIONS TO THIS RULE. Peters crossed the room in two long steps and  aside. Set into the gray wall behind it was a gray microphone pickup. He pulled it out, undipped a wire, and pushed it back in place. He moved the picture in front of it again. "Right now I'd be out of a job," he said, "except that the son of a bitch is out fixing a drunk-driving rap for some actor. All the mike switches are in his office. He has the whole joint wired. The other morning I suggested to him that he have a microfilm camera installed with infra red light behind a diaphanous mirror in the reception room. He didn't like the idea too well. Maybe because somebody else had it." He sat down in one of the hard gray chairs.